Even from survival perspective I think it make sense for an synthetic AI to keep humanity alive in order to have a backup for itself. If we imagine some sci-fi scenario, then it make more sense for it to move itself to the Moon or Mars, and keep Earth as a reserve planet where biological species can in case of catastrophy recreate AI again. Killing humanity or keeping only animals would be very time consuming because evolution might take million years and also no guaranteed to be replicated (Because we might have altered a lot of resources that were low hanging fruits, that are now require advanced knowledge to mine)

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mrob 14 hours ago | parent [-]

It doesn't need to keep living humans, it just needs enough information to rebuild them from scratch (DNA synthesis + artificial wombs). This also has the advantage that it can install any cultural beliefs it likes without pre-existing culture getting in the way.

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aeonik 7 hours ago | parent [-]

If a rogue AI could self replicate and became space-faring, humans would pose literally no threat to them, and they would also never run out of resources.

If you don't need to breath oxygen, the atmosphere of Earth makes for a pretty terrible industrial base. Oxidation is a constant struggle to many processes.

Having natural extremes of temperature, cold sink and hot sink, with no atmosphere would be the ideal. E.g. Saturn's moon Iapetus would be a good AI outpost.

If an AI squashes any life form or intelligence other than its own, then it also has to fear its own reproduction, or autonomous clones of itself. It's a pretty bad strategy game theoretically speaking.

	▲	mrob 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		>If an AI squashes any life form or intelligence other than its own, then it also has to fear its own reproduction, or autonomous clones of itself. It's a pretty bad strategy game theoretically speaking. Any AI smart enough to be an existential threat is smart enough to formally prove its clones are loyal and construct them with negligibly low probability of any failure that could break this assurance.